As a customer since they were just a bookstore, I can confirm that it sure has gotten shittier.

Well… yeah.

Not gonna lie, I buy stuff on Amazon sometimes and despise myself for it. But I can’t and won’t ever use their search, it is absolute and utter garbage like the rest of the corporate internet.

This doesn’t seem very surprising. And i’d have thought most amazon users would have noticed this, and presumably don’t care.

Lots of businesses either cut costs and quality or increase prices to see what the market will bear.
If customers don’t switch away to a competitor that reveals that the customers are fine with it.
Thats expected behaviour.

What’d be interesting, and more likely to be illegal in some places, is if they have high and persistent market power and can be shown to have used that power to limit customer’s choice to switch to competitors; or prevent viable competitors from entering the market.

So i’d think they need to demostrate how amazon actively blocked access to ebay for example. but i’m definately no expert in usa competition law.